Page 53 of Deadly Sights

“Where would I have spent the most time?”

“The adults kept us busy with various lessons and physical training. But you were on a mission to find your parents, so when you weren’t helping or protecting me and our friend, Chloe, you were sneaking into the private offices and reading through the files. I accompanied you more often after I turned thirteen, but you searched on your own a lot.” I gauge her face for signs she remembers or any hint of distress.

“Chloe?” She rubs her temple and closes her eyes. “The name is familiar, but I can’t associate a face with her name. Maybe I’ve met too many Chloes.”

The disappointment in her voice is difficult for me to swallow. If I could, I would wave a magic wand to restore Nadira’s memories and solve all her problems for her. But Nadira isn’t helpless and doesn’t require coddling. She’s one of the strongest people I know, the person I admire most in the world, and I’ll stand beside her when she decides to lean on me in whatever capacity she needs.

Despite all that, I try not to center myself and my lifelong desire in her struggle. Because in the end, the Nadira walking beside me is a combination of the Nadira I fell in love with as a child and the woman she’s become. At her core, she is the same. The changes in her could have been inevitable or due to the experiences she had since her accident. We’ll never know, and it’s irrelevant to my love for her.

“What happened with Chloe?” Nadira asks.

“She took your disappearance hard. At first, she thought like I did, that you would never leave us. But as time passed, she felt you’d betrayed us. That you escaped our world to live happily with your family and you never intended to get us. Eventually, she became bitter and we fell out because I never lost faith inyou and my presence was a painful reminder of the promises we made to each other. Promises she thought you broke.”

Nadira clutches the space above her heart with her free hand. “I don’t know a lot about who I was, but I feel deep inside that if I made a promise, I would have tried to keep it, no matter what.”

“I know.” I squeeze the hand I hold to reassure her, but a sadness settles over her shoulder I’m powerless to remove or lighten.

We continue walking aimlessly around the campus in the hopes something will trigger a memory or some familiarity that I can add context to.

“What’s over there?” Nadira points toward a remote area on the campus.

I search her profile for signs of recognition. But the frown and tightness around her eyes as she glares only points to her struggle. I wrestle my flaring expectations to a low flame.

“Let’s check it out.” I lead her past the old maintenance building.

As we approach the door, her hold on me strengthens, and she rubs her temple. “This feels so familiar.” She tugs at the door, but because of the building’s long abandonment, it doesn’t budge.

I assist her until the building slowly opens.

“What used to be in here?” She swipes at the cobwebs and coughs because of the dust floating in the air.

“It’s the old maintenance building.”

She spins around in excitement. “Did I used to garden? I remember taking gardening tools—” she runs to a shelf “—from here. Funny, I don’t have a green thumb. My knowledge about nature comes from tracking and identifying poisonous plants.” She raises her hands and studies the racks.

“That’s because we never used the tools to garden. When you showed up, I’d already been here for four years and I wasan outcast. At first, I was bummed about my mom and resisted participating in the combat lessons. After a year, I started paying attention, but the instructors ignored me and I didn’t pick up the exercises quickly enough. Then you forced yourself into my life and took the time to teach me. The three of us used to sneak in here at night to get what we needed.”

Nadira walks around the building and opens doors. Amid the broken windows, debris from the elements, and wild animals that took up shelter, are dusty shelves and rusty, old equipment that stopped working long before the orphanage closed.

“Knowing who I am now, I’m guessing I snuck out to do more than tutor you. I must have created a base. It’s something I still do, despite the danger. My current organization encourages me to live a nomadic existence, but I’ve always resisted.”

“You’re right. Follow me.” I lead her to the area our fort used to be. My heart is full of optimism. “It looks like someone discovered it. You’d built a fort?—”

“We celebrated birthdays here.” Wonder and excitement fill her voice and eyes. “To make it hard to find, I kept it small and we had to crawl inside!” She spins in place as if envisioning where everything was. “And this is where we used to plan my next moves on how to find my parents. Ooh, I…I remember, when I was about seven, that’s when they started giving me solo missions. Mostly pickpocketing and gathering intel. Whenever they let me out, I would collect local papers, sneak into libraries to get archived publications, and watch the uncensored news whenever it coincided with the small freedoms they allowed us. All to find clues to my parents’ whereabouts. My biggest hope was to find an interview with them.”

“Yeah, Chloe and I did the same. If there was an article about a missing child, we brought it back, regardless of the description.”

Her shoulders slump with fresh defeat, mirroring her reaction years ago when we realized the girls were rarely Black. The missing children notices for children of color either didn’t have a photo or the picture wasn’t recent. Just like in the past, Nadira shakes off her gloom.

“I will find out what happened to my parents one day,” she vows.

“I have every confidence, you will.”

She smiles at the conviction in my voice, then she holds her hand out to me. “Okay, I’m ready for more. If things continue to jog my memory, I’m sure we’ll find the key to what your people want to keep hidden.”

Hand in hand, we walk toward the main building housing the dorms. When she doesn’t pause or show a sense of familiarity in the room she and Chloe used to sleep in, I swallow my disappointment. She glances at me and I clear my face, but not in time.

“What is it? Is there something special about this place I’m missing?”

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